• Notification Date: 11-01-2022
• Notification No: N/A

Bombay High Court issues NBW against Co-directors for Missing TDS Deadline

The Bombay High Court issued non-bailable warrants against two joint directors by the session’s court. The charges are against GM Singh and another director of two automobile companies. The warrant has been issued after the confirmation of their 2019 conviction and sentence for failing to deposit TDS within the due time as decided by law.

The sentence, as imposed by the magistrate and approved by the session’s court, penalizes the directors for Rs 5,000 for each company. The court has also pressed a charge for three months’ rigorous imprisonment on directors Singh and his wife, Parveen Nindrajog. They are both in their 70s and in precarious health.

They were directors of the companies Ichibaan Automobiles Pvt Ltd and GMS Motors Pvt Ltd. G M Singh was the director in both the companies. Nindrajog has been charged for a separate criminal revision. The director pleas in front of the HC for the withdrawal of their sentence.

The directors were not present in the sessions court on the judgment day when the court pressed NBWs against them. This case is a rare conviction in a TDS case.

Justice Revati Nohite Dere issued a notice to Income Tax Department on January 6 posting this matter to January 20 and to keep the NBW stayed till that date.

The directors pleaded before the HC through their lawyers. According to the lawyers, Sujay Kantawala and Ashish Chavan, the directors have deposited the TDS amount with the penal interest even before the show cause notice was issued. But the concurrent courts have ignored these facts. The lawyers also added that the sanction to prosecute the directors was approved without any logical reason by the IT commissioner. They claim that the default was unintentional that has been caused due to financial difficulties which is a reasonable cause. Their failure has caused no harm to the government and they have later paid the TDS amount along with interest.

According to IT Act, TDS is required to be deposited in the government treasury by the 7th of the upcoming month. Hence, the IT department case that has been articulated before sessions of court through public prosecutor Amit Munde is completely baseless.

According to the directors of the companies, they deducted tax amount worth Rs 7.5 lakh in March 2010 for the Ichibaan case and Rs 42 lakh for the GMS case. They claim that the charges labeled against them for not depositing tax to the credit of the Central government within the deadline are completely vague.